“Do not buy a Microsoft Surface RT yet.”
So says tech guru Brent Ozar, who’s sending his back after endless frustrations. He loves the hardware, but the Microsoft hasn’t thought the software all the way through. Here’s a clip of him trying (and failing) to save a Word RT document.
In Pages on an iPad, you don’t even save documents per se. You type them up and they simply exist in iCloud. If you have the same document already open on your desktop or laptop or iPhone or iPod Touch, any changes or additions will appear before you can put down the iPad and pick up your MacBook. Nifty.
So what bugs me so much about this video isn’t the fact that Ozar can’t get permission to save his document. Or that he doesn’t even have a way to copy and paste what he already has so he doesn’t lose any work. The troublesome part is, requires you to access the file system at all. That’s antithetical to the entire notion of how tablets are supposed to work: Invisibly.
Now let’s get to the big finish:
The Surface Pro comes out in a few months. The hardware design is very similar, but heavier, thicker, and with a “real” processor that requires a fan. Yes, those are drawbacks, but they come with a very, very powerful advantage: the Surface Pro will run real Windows 8. This means (hopefully) none of the buggy Windows RT problems, and perhaps more importantly, a full stable of applications.
This is where the Surface Pro really loses me. The RT is a nice piece of hardware, hobbled by a paltry selection of software that isn’t fully touch-friendly. The Pro is going to be a massive piece of hardware, with tons of software none of which is designed at all for touch. What you gain in weight you lose in tablet functionality.
If you want or need a laptop, get one. If you want or need a tablet, get one of those. But Microsoft promised “no compromises” with the Surface, and delivered instead a series of increasingly unwieldy compromises unsuited to the form factor.
The quote in your title would have matched my sentiment exactly if that last, three-letter word had been left off altogether. The only way to have a bigger app ecosytem than iOS is with the uncrippled Windows 8 — not RT.
I’ll go out on a limb here, but Brent Ozar is doing it wrong. He’s apparently not associated the ID that he setup on his laptop with a Windows Account. If he does that, he won’t get prompted for credentials when he tries to save to Skydrive.
RTFM, Brent.
When you buy an iOS device, setup prompts you for your Apple ID. And then you’re done authenticating for local/cloud storage.
WTF does MS not get about that?
Aso, that’s not a latopn, that’s a Surface tablet. So you might want to be a little ore cautious with the RTFM.
Since I first heard the specs on the two Surface tablets it’s seemed Microsoft has been unwilling to fully commit or unable to wrap their brains around “not a laptop”
So, you get a choice tween RT’s unwillingness to commit and the full blown version that, aw screw it, it’s a netbook. Doesn’t surprise me coming from Microsoft.
Microsoft is all about leveraging their existing code into dominance of whatever sector they enter. Therefore a complete break with their existing codebase and interface isn’t going to happen…. especially considering that their existing code is their only advantage over iOS and Android. If they can’t figure out a way to take advantage of that, Surface is dead in the water.
Pretty much everything about Surface and WindowsRT follows from that.
Microsoft may eventually get it into a usable (and possibly useful) form- based on their track record, version 3 will probably not suck too much.
Same thing with the RT – except things are in different places. We call this “we moved your cheese”. People who work with iOS get freaked out because Windows RT isn’t iOS. So they say it’s broke.
Again, RTFM and then after you understand it bitch at me…
The concept of a tablet is there is no need to RTFM — a concept you and Steve (F) Ballmer seem to be unclear on.
The concept of a tablet seems to me to be “thin, portable, and with a touchscreen”. No-manual is an Apple thing, not a tablet thing. Given how Apple has owned the tablet market, it’s easy to confuse the two, but they are separate.
I feel like people want things to be more complex because it makes them feel superior or more intelligent. It’s kind of like people who refuse to have sports cars with electronic paddle shifters and launch control and instead want the clutch and manual gearbox. It was a fair argument at first, when paddle shifters were laggy and slow and launch control sucked. Now, electronic shifting is ridiculously fast, auto rev-matches, tells you when to shift, and launch control can take you 0-60 in under 4 seconds. The purpose, of course, is to remove that variable element and allow the driver to focus more on racing/driving.
Now, it’s sad to see people whine about wanting a ‘proper gearbox’. They’re mad that technology has allowed people with less shifting/launching ability to not only compete with them, but keep up and beat them. I see their point, it’s frustrating to realize that technology and time has passed you by. It’s the same with Apple. They design software that does the thinking for you, so you don’t have to waste time on it and can focus on something else.
Just a really broad example – wireless routers. I bought an Apple Airport thing. I plugged it in and I had wireless up and all devices connected in about 5 minutes. All I really had to do was set a password. I purchased a Linksys before that and it took hours. Hours. I read the manual. I did everything it said and still failed. That is not optimal. There’s a point to made in there somewhere.
Did he try out OneNote? It seems to me that OneNote is perfect for tablets–no saving, cloud-enabled, and you can sketch, write, type, paste, whatever, with no restrictions. That might be worth getting RT for.
He tried, Office, which is supposed to be one of the big selling points of buying a Surface,
Hmmm, I just finished reading his review, and the answer seems to be “No”. He played with Word and Powerpoint only.
Onenote IS Office. I don’t think your tech guy is very good. I saved to the C: drive and directly to SkyDrive. You ‘tech guy’ has hidden in his video where he is trying to save the document. An he has not revealed how he is logged onto his RT. Is he using a Microsoft account to log onto the RT device? Or did h foolishly go with a local account? I have had none of these problems so I think your ‘tech guy’ is not very capable.
I’ve been using the Office 2013 preview with Skydrive and have been exceptionally pleased with its functionality and integration. However, I may have low standards and this video does give me pause to upgrade to Windows 8. It take a change in comfort level to not hit the save button constantly and I do seem to have a document or two floating around that aren’t synced. Also, I highly recommend OneNote to whomever needs help organizing thoughts, research and so forth. I may not upgrade to Windows 8 right away but I’ll pay for 365 and Skydrive. My fear is that while Office has been a fairly consistent performer over the years Microsoft has let to much software and services become mediocre.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about SkyDrive. Why it isn’t closely integrated into RT is a mystery.
I saved directly into SkyDrive because it IS integrated in RT. It shows right up in the save dialog in Word. Your Tech Guy isn’t very good if he creates these problems. I cannot get my Windows RT device to ask me for permission to save. it just saves to Skydrive or C: drive.
I know nothing of this gadget, but I know a basic principle that applies to technology far and wide: Never buy the prototype.
It’s my experience that unwieldy form factors and UIs that get in your way aren’t considered compromises by many tech geeks, especially the kind that hate Apple and still use terms like “fanboi” and “cult” to describe people who do care about such things. “Form factor” isn’t on their checklist of features, and neither is “saving is not a hassle”. So people that do care about them are obviously affected by some sort of reality distortion field where form factor and seamless UIs matter.
That’s antithetical to the entire notion of how tablets are supposed to work: Invisibly.
Well, that might be a bit much.
The most successful tablet line in the world works invisibly, yes – and the model is certainly quite capable of being implemented in a world-class manner.
But that’s not part of the definition of “tablet”, which is about form factor.
The problem with Office on RT is that it sucks, not that “there’s a filesystem”; filesystems are a valid option, and sometimes even superior, like when you’re doing a lot of document manipulation and especially transfer.
(Cloud storage or “just there” storage like in iOS with or without iCloud is great – but imagine the “business” case that Office RT is aimed at where, say, “you get a file on an SD card at a conference” and you want to edit it – or distribute one you made, to others.
Sometimes the filesystem model is superior, sometimes it’s inferior.
Neither way is “the way a Tablet-qua-tablet should work”; the problem here is the implementation more than the fact of a filesystem.)
Bought the Surface RT on Day 1 (extended benefits are a wonderful thing.
I find it to be an amusingly schizophrenic device. The screen is gorgeous, and the little Tegra hamster spins in its wheel pretty well with Win8 RT. For surfing the web, and dinking around with Metro-ized apps, not bad.
Excel, PowerPoint and Word all work as I’ve come to expect using Win8/Office 2013 on the Asus B121. But….no Outlook. Haven’t been able to get the Microsoft Mail app to talk to Microsoft Exchange on a Microsoft Surface yet (on the not-Microsoft iPad, it was up in seconds). But the TouchCover keyboard will take a bit of getting used to; it’s no better to type on (IMHO) than the virtual keyboard on the iPad – and I wonder how well its felted surface will hold up to wear and tear, as well as soiling; cloth attracts dirt. On the iPad, the felted side of the SmartCover faces inward, to protect and clean the optical glass; the exposed surface of the closed cover is easy-to-clean plastic. The TouchCover’s felted surface is on the _outside_ when closed. Hmm….
Then there’s the feel of the thing. The Surface has odd little surfaces sticking out of it (maybe that’s why they called it that). The iPad is a smooth curve on the edges, delightful to hold. The Surface is bumps and lines and notches and indentations, with a (by comparison) hard reverse bevel that’s much less comfortable in the hand – or at least my iPad-trained hand. Not nearly as pleasing to hold. It really is as if, as Stephen has pointed out, you’re not supposed to touch it; flip out the Kickstand, flop open the TouchCover, and treat it like a laptop – with a bit of touch functionality thrown in.
Clever little gadget – but it won’t replace my iPad. As for the Surface Pro, it has a smaller screen than the B121, which _is_ a legitimate laptop replacement. So it won’t replace that either.
I have an Android tablet. It drives me nuts!
Sure, it has a user interface that is touch-oriented, and I have access to thousands of programs that are oriented towards touch. But I’m also a Linux user. And it frustrates me that I know of thousands of programs that are out of reach, because everything is written to use the touch screen–and everything must be written in Java.
Never mind that these programs have had many man-hours devoted to getting things just right. Never mind that many of these things can be tweaked to use touch screens just fine. Never mind that Android “floats” on Linux, but you can be locked out of using it.
And never mind that my tablet has more computing power than my laptop that just fizzled…and that I can’t afford a new laptop. (I bought my tablet just before their laptop fizzled.) I have so much potential in my hands! But I’m locked out of that power.
I really would like to experiment with touch input (another reason I got a touchscreen device), because there’s so much that we don’t know about touch just yet…but the approach I’ve seen so far– throw away the old, and start afresh–has its own severe flaws.
This is where the Surface Pro really loses me. The RT is a nice piece of hardware, hobbled by a paltry selection of software that isn’t fully touch-friendly.
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The author DOES realize that the form factor with word is supposed to be used with the trackpad (which is on the keyboard) or mouse — doesn’t he?
I expect to see apps with a hybrid form factor thanks to the Windows 8 ecosystem. This is exciting stuff, as a UI designer.
That’s exactly what tablets have been missing — a laptop keyboard too flexible to use on your lap.
You know, MS invented tablets over a decade ago, and they went nowhere. Surface makes me think they learned some important lessons from their failed tablets, but failed to learn some other, just as important lessons.
Mammoths were immense and impressive creatures. But they died out when early man evolved a toolkit and tactics to hunt them.
We’ve got the toolkit and tactics to hunt Microsoft to extinction, we just need to get serious about getting the job done. Then we can work on the short-faced bear … I mean Oracle.